She had found her oars behind the shed where she had stored them before leaving, and though they had splintered a bit through the damp and cold of the winter, they were still usable for a few more loops on the lake.
“Gretel!”
It was Petr. They were back from the System station.
Gretel had only been on the water for ten minutes, maybe less, but she was already tired, embarrassingly out of shape from where her fitness had been less than a year ago. Petr’s return was a good excuse to stop for the day, though she would have relished another thirty minutes just to drift along the banks of the orchard and then down to Rifle Field.
Gretel u-turned the canoe back toward home, and within a few long strokes of the oars, she could see Petr standing on the bank of her property. He was so tall now, she noticed, so filled out compared to the boy she remembered standing on the opposite bank only a summer ago, when the harvest was ending and Gretel’s life had settled into some semblance of normalcy.
Before her mother had returned.
That day and those that followed were the most joyous ones of Gretel’s life. Of course, they were. And there was never anything she wouldn’t have given to have that first moment when her mother finally came home safe and relatively unharmed.
But the price of that return had been the new life Gretel had carved out for herself. That life had ended the day her mother resurfaced. The life of the Klahrs and of Petr, of complete independence and adulthood, was to be destroyed, uprooted in a quest to find the answers to ancient questions in a strange world. It was a small price to pay, Gretel knew, but it was a price nonetheless.
“Petr, what is it?” Gretel steered the canoe toward Petr and stepped to the shore as the bottom of the boat nipped the muddy bank.
“It’s done.” Petr smiled.
“So he knows I’m back then, this Dodd person, and he doesn’t suspect that you’re up to anything?”
“It didn’t go exactly as we planned, but I’m pretty sure he believed me. Believed us. Ben was pretty cool.”
Gretel frowned and leaned into Petr, hugging him gently. “So I guess we’ll know the truth soon. If the System is conspiring with the witch in some way, then she could be coming any day.”
“There is no ‘if,’ Gretel, it is official. Officer Dodd was in his office reading that book you told me about. Your book. Orphism.”
“What?”
“I saw it up close. I saw the name.”
Gretel was speechless but knew instantly that Petr was right. The officer had stolen the book from the cabin and was now bewitched by the promise of an everlasting life.
But he was reading it?
“So they’ll almost certainly be coming, but we may have a day or two longer than we thought.”
Gretel was stilled stunned by the Orphism revelation, but she let it go for the moment. “Why is that?”
“Thanks to Ben. He told Dodd your mother was on her way here but that she wouldn’t be coming for a week or so.”
How Gretel wished that were true. “That should work. It’s my mother she really wants, I think.” Gretel paused and then swallowed hard. “But what about Mrs. Klahr, Petr? How can this go on?”
“I don’t know, Gretel. I just know that we have to trust this plan. This is what we decided, so we need to see it through. We have to trust that the woman will keep her alive. That she’ll come out of this okay. Somehow. We stay the course, at least until we see it isn’t working.”
Gretel nodded and grinned. “When did you get to be a man?”
Petr shrugged, and then the two teenagers walked back to the house where Hansel gave Petr a tour of the newly cleaned home. They hadn’t quite figured out a full plan for how they would kill the woman once and for all, but each of the kids pointed out a few places where potential traps could be laid.
When nightfall arrived, the three kids sat on the deck, awake but quiet, listening to the sounds of the forest.
“Petr!”
It was Ben, banging on the outside door, frantic.
Gretel quickly sprang to the front and opened the door. “Ben, what is it?”
“Where is Petr?”
“I’m right here, Ben,” Petr said, stepping next to Gretel. “What happened?’
“It’s Sofia and her brother Claude. They’ve gone missing.”
“Missing? What? How do you know?”
“I went to check on Sofia, to see how she was doing after yesterday. I wanted to make sure she was okay and that she still understood that she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about what we discussed. I just never had a perfect feeling that she was committed to her promise.”
“And she was gone?”
“Her mother said they left to go check on someone. Someone they were concerned about. She pressed them, but they wouldn’t tell her who it was. Her mother said Sofia looked very concerned. ‘Like she had seen the devil,’ she said.”
“Oh no. Oh my god.” Gretel felt a surge of guilt well up from her belly and she teetered on the verge of crying.
Petr instinctively put his arm around her.
“They went to look for her, didn’t they?”
“I don’t know, Gretel, but I can’t think of anything else. I didn’t know what to say to her mother, but I think she suspected that I knew something. I must have turned completely white.”
Hansel came from the porch now. “Why did you go over there, Ben? Why couldn’t you leave it alone? Look at where we are now.”
“I went to check on my friend, you little brat!”
Hansel moved in toward Ben, and Petr stepped in between them.
“Stop it,” Gretel snapped, her voice short and low. “Hansel, that’s enough. We have to figure this out, but not by ripping each other apart.”
“She’s dead, Gretel,” Hansel said. “And her brother too.”
Gretel couldn’t have imagined the words her brother had just spoken being said with any less emotion. She stayed silent, a tacit acknowledgement that what her brother had just stated was probably true. With that understanding, Ben let out a short cry of despair.
“There’s nothing we can do now.”
Hansel walked back to the porch and resumed his darkened meditation.
“She may be coming sooner now,” Petr said finally, allowing his friend to gather himself first. “This could change things.”
“If she does, we have to be ready,” Gretel stated flatly. “We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“What do we do about Sofia?” Ben asked, swiping the streaks of tears from his cheeks. It was a question of logistics.
Petr took control. “I’ll go to her house tomorrow and speak with her mother. She doesn’t know me, but I’ll tell her my father used to work for the System.”
“So? What will that mean to her?”
“If she hasn’t already, I’ll tell her to call the System and file a report on her children. And then I’ll tell her to make sure she asks for Officer Dodd.”
Chapter 35
Amanda Klahr woke with a scream and stared at the red streak smiling across her window. It looked like the residue from a clown’s kiss but was, in fact, the dried blood of the young victims who had attempted to help her. Who were they? Where did they come from?
She looked at the shadows on the wall and judged it late afternoon; she had no idea of which day. She couldn’t depend on the quality of her assessments about much of anything anymore—the drug dosages had been substantial over the past week—but she judged that it had been several days since the kids had been there.
She had heard the returning voice of Dodd, and his departure again the next day, and she was positive she had also heard the coming and going of at least one other vehicle.
And she specifically remembered the hovering presence of the woman, standing above Amanda the moment the sun broke through the bedroom window.
“They know you’re here, Amanda. They know you’re alive. Just as I suspected.” The glee in the woman’s voice had been like tha
t of a young girl who had just heard the secret of a school yard crush.
“I don’t know them,” Amanda had managed, her voice drugged and dreamy. “That isn’t them.”
“Oh, I know that’s not young Petr, and the pretty girl with him certainly was not Gretel. But they’re acquainted. Somehow. Especially the girl. I could smell it on her.”
“So kill me. Kill me now. They know you’re here. Those kids will be missed. They’ll be coming for you.”
“Kill you?” The woman’s squawking made Amanda cover her ears with her hands. “Why would I do that now?”
“I…because…” Amanda’s voice trickled off into a low groan.
“Because they’ll be coming for me? Who? The System?” The cackling again. “Not yet, Amanda Klahr. Not yet. But when they finally do, I will be gone. We’re leaving in the morning. We’re going back to your home in the Back Country. And on the way, I’ll make my decision about whether I want Gretel and Petr to watch me kill you or you to watch me kill them.”
Chapter 36
“You should be tendering to shore by morning, Mrs. Morgan. The voyage was about a half day longer than I anticipated. For that, I apologize.”
It was less than six days since she and the crew of the Kugel had departed the docks of the Old World, leaving her new mysterious allies, Oskar and Noah, behind. She hadn’t looked back at them when she walked to the pier, wanting to remember them without tears in their eyes.
“Well that simply won’t do,” Anika joked. “I’ve got a tea with the queen at midnight.”
Captain Hemmer looked at Anika quizzically and then smiled, catching the sarcasm a little late.
“I didn’t know there were boats made that could go so far at such speeds.” Anika sat on the bridge, staring out at the dark water before her.
“There are many, but most people cannot afford to take them across the great seas. But you are the great friend of my friend Noah, and you are privileged.”
“I thought you owed him a favor.”
Captain Hemmer kept a straight face and continued staring forward over the wheel of his ship. “Yes, there is that too.”
Anika bellowed a full throaty laugh. It was a sound she couldn’t remember having made in years.
But she would be home soon, and though her future—her very life—was dangling like an overripe cherry from a tree, Anika felt she had landed for a moment inside a small circumference of peace.
“Thank you, Captain Hemmer.”
The captain nodded and stayed focused on the horizon. “You should sleep, Mrs. Morgan. And be ready for the day ahead.”
It was great advice, and Anika decided to heed it. Tomorrow could be the longest day she’d ever known.
Chapter 37
Amanda Klahr was right: they would be coming. And sooner than Marlene would have liked.
Perhaps she would have had more time if she had only taken the children’s lives. She had smelled Gretel on the girl, that was true, so the children clearly hadn’t stumbled upon Marlene’s cabin accidentally, but that didn’t necessarily mean they would have been missed immediately. Back Country folk were wanderers—often becoming transients and runaways—if she could have located the vehicle that had taken them to her, she could have hidden it with the others. It would have given her an extra day, at least. Even longer if no one talked with Gretel and her gang of misfits.
But none of that mattered now. Dodd was dead. And that changed everything.
Marlene walked to the cruiser that she moved beside the covered truck at the line of her property. It wasn’t completely hidden from view, but anyone who casually approached the yard wouldn’t have seen it without focusing on it. She opened the trunk and was struck immediately by the smell of a decomposing Georg Klahr. His body was gone—Marlene didn’t try to imagine what Dodd had done with it—but the odor remained. She guessed that even someone without her abilities would have smelled it.
She closed the empty trunk and then opened the back passenger door and looked on the floor where she saw the thick corner of something peeking from under the seat. There was no mistaking what that was.
Orphism.
She slid the book into full view and brought it to her chest, embracing it as she would a lost pet that had been found alive. She opened the driver’s door of the Klahr truck and placed the book gently on the seat, preparing it for transfer.
She closed the door and then walked to the front of the truck and pulled the tarp completely from the vehicle and draped it as best she could over the police cruiser. The cruiser was slightly too long and bulky for the canvas, but again, in a few days, none of it would matter. By then, she would be gone. By then, she would be headed for her homeland.
But before that, there would be a reckoning. At least for Gretel Morgan. If her deliverance to Anika Morgan had to wait, then it could, but she wouldn’t allow them both to go unpunished.
As much as she detested having to do it, Marlene made the decision to keep Amanda Klahr alive. She figured the woman could have some use gaining access to the Morgan home, if that was, indeed, where they had taken refuge. Perhaps the Klahr woman could spring any traps that had been laid in wait for her. Gretel was smart, and Petr seemed to have some wit to him as well, so Marlene would tread gently once she reached their lair. If she was wrong and the woman was proved to be a liability, Marlene could easily kill her at any moment.
Marlene pushed Orphism to the passenger side and sat in the driver’s seat. She grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and started the ignition. With not much protest, the truck fired up. She drove to the front and got out, leaving the engine running, and walked in the front door of the cabin.
Amanda Klahr was sitting in the lone chair like a life-sized doll. Her head bobbed to her chest, but she was awake, moaning. Just enough medicine, Marlene thought. I just need you to walk.
“Get up!”
Amanda Klahr grunted and got to her feet, the protest of her mind and body dwarfed by her broken spirit.
“We’re going home, Mrs. Klahr. You should be thrilled.”
Through a haze of drug and slumber, and with her eyes still closed, Amanda Klahr extended a broad smile that made Marlene’s face twitch into a sneer.
Marlene guided Amanda into the passenger seat and then walked around to the opposite side.
“Let’s go kill your family.”
Amanda Klahr’s smile broadened, and then she lifted her left hand into a fist and thrust it toward Marlene, striking her just below the ear.
Marlene screamed with fury, a sound borne of frustration as much as anything, and then she raked her icy nails across the face of her prisoner.
The blood from Amanda Klahr’s cheek splattered the side window and windshield, and Marlene grunted at the potential attraction this would cause.
“It is with the smallest of margins that you are still alive. One more movement that I think is out of place, and my nails will slice your throat.”
Chapter 38
Gretel woke the next morning with the premonition of Mrs. Klahr lingering in her mind. She knew it was a positive sign that her friend and mentor, her surrogate mother for almost a year, was alive.
Gretel always considered the possibility that Mrs. Klahr would be in tow with the witch when the evil hag eventually came, a hostage to hold off any potential ambush. And thus, the traps they had laid were considered carefully, established with Mrs. Klahr in mind. A woman as mad as the witch would waste no time disposing of her captor, especially if she believed she, herself, was about to die.
No, they needed to let the witch arrive onto the property safely, unencumbered; and as she made her way toward the home, they couldn’t give away their strategy or position too early. They would have to rescue Mrs. Klahr first, and once she was safe and the witch was isolated, then the real battle would begin. And Gretel knew it would be mostly hers to fight.
Gretel had let Petr take command of the planning; it was, after all, he who had stayed and investigated the witch for
almost a year, discovering the cracks in the System’s work and calling them to account for it. And the woman had killed his father. His vendetta ran deeper than hers, she supposed, so the least she could do was allow him the lead at this stage.
But the next stage was hers.
The lessons she had learned in Orphism, on her own and from the elders of the Old World, would be realized soon.
Or perhaps not. Either way she would know in the next few days. Maybe sooner.
She had studied the words in the book carefully, not only out of respect to her heritage, but from a true love of the lessons inside. She began to feel the power of them, not just on an emotional level, but physically as well. She never actually believed the time would come to summon the power though, since such strength was only needed against someone as dreadful as the witch, and she, everyone knew, was dead.
But she wasn’t dead, and soon it would be time to act.
“How did it go with the mother? Are they calling the System?” Ben ran toward his own truck as Petr brought it to a stop in front of Gretel’s house.
Petr got out of the truck and looked down toward the ground, not making eye contact with Ben or Gretel.
“Petr, what’s the matter?” Gretel asked.
“I don’t think she believed me.”
“Why? What did you say?”
“I told her who I was. And that my father worked for the System. And that she should call them if Sofia and Claude didn’t come home soon. She had already called the local police and was a little suspicious about calling the System. Folks here don’t do that very often, apparently.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Anyway, she walked me out when I was leaving, and she noticed the truck. She asked me if it was yours, Ben, and I said no. I’m not sure why I said that, but I thought it would seem suspicious that I was driving your truck.”
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